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Capture US regulatory agencies while you can. I'd perhaps quibble a bit to say US financial regulatory agencies can't be captured in the fashion of traditional

Capture US regulatory agencies while you can. I'd perhaps quibble a bit to say US financial regulatory agencies can't be captured in the fashion of traditional regulators (where the "revolving door" is awful). This is because they were "captured from the beginning", operated specifically for the benefit of large financial firm from the very start. The Federal Reserve isn't even a traditional agency but public, private partnership ("has a 'unique structure that is both public and private'). EPA theoretically protects "the environment" a thing outside markets. Financial regulators protect markets. Protecting markets is completely compatible with protecting the profits of the largest players in the markets. So it seems logical regulators will remain "objective" in their assessments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve

vmception 6y ago
I'd say they can. Enforcement divisions have sole heads who can make unilateral decisions that the commissioners never review. Commissioners and Chairs can make make rulings favorable or ignore making unfavorable rulings, they can do anything they want regardless of what happens during the comment periods. The CFTC, OCC, CFPB all have single head directors. The SEC has up to 5, and the FRB is the most decentralized but its Board of Governor's head is the primary sole signal to the international market on this entire planet regardless of how much they actually do behind the scenes. The Treasury doesn't have to be adversarial either, no matter how much it wants us to tie our national identity and ego to its currency, not all Treasuries or Central Banks have this concern. Right now, crypto related topics are either ignored or adversarial. Crypto related topics can be collaborative or simply favorable. Capture in this context (and all contexts of regulatory capture) just mean that someone joins for a certain purpose, does all of the other tasks correctly and with high competence, but also makes sure their single issue is protected.
- joe_the_user 6y ago
  Enforcement divisions have sole heads who can make unilateral decisions that the commissioners never review. I'd just point out that at the end of the day, broad power of social institutions are going to trump the overt lines of command. Capture in this context (and all contexts of regulatory capture) just mean that someone joins for a certain purpose, does all of the other tasks correctly and with high competence, but also makes sure their single issue is protected. Well, Regulatory capture can have a lot of meanings I suppose. One really pernicious phenomena is when things that don't have institutional power on their own ("the environment", "average people's health", overall cyber-security of the country, etc) get shunted aside for particular institutional interests (chemical companies, IoT sellers/consumers etc). This is the umbrella where "regulatory capture" lets these externalities run wild. Now, if you want to use "regulatory capture" as more akin the general phenomena known as "getting a seat at the table", know yourself out. The point is that seats of that allow some special consideration, yes, but you can't carve up existing institutions the EPA can carve up restrictions on pesticides. I wish it was the opposite, obviously but there you are.

vmception 6y ago

I'd say they can. Enforcement divisions have sole heads who can make unilateral decisions that the commissioners never review. Commissioners and Chairs can make make rulings favorable or ignore making unfavorable rulings, they can do anything they want regardless of what happens during the comment periods. The CFTC, OCC, CFPB all have single head directors. The SEC has up to 5, and the FRB is the most decentralized but its Board of Governor's head is the primary sole signal to the international market on this entire planet regardless of how much they actually do behind the scenes. The Treasury doesn't have to be adversarial either, no matter how much it wants us to tie our national identity and ego to its currency, not all Treasuries or Central Banks have this concern. Right now, crypto related topics are either ignored or adversarial. Crypto related topics can be collaborative or simply favorable. Capture in this context (and all contexts of regulatory capture) just mean that someone joins for a certain purpose, does all of the other tasks correctly and with high competence, but also makes sure their single issue is protected.

joe_the_user 6y ago
Enforcement divisions have sole heads who can make unilateral decisions that the commissioners never review. I'd just point out that at the end of the day, broad power of social institutions are going to trump the overt lines of command. Capture in this context (and all contexts of regulatory capture) just mean that someone joins for a certain purpose, does all of the other tasks correctly and with high competence, but also makes sure their single issue is protected. Well, Regulatory capture can have a lot of meanings I suppose. One really pernicious phenomena is when things that don't have institutional power on their own ("the environment", "average people's health", overall cyber-security of the country, etc) get shunted aside for particular institutional interests (chemical companies, IoT sellers/consumers etc). This is the umbrella where "regulatory capture" lets these externalities run wild. Now, if you want to use "regulatory capture" as more akin the general phenomena known as "getting a seat at the table", know yourself out. The point is that seats of that allow some special consideration, yes, but you can't carve up existing institutions the EPA can carve up restrictions on pesticides. I wish it was the opposite, obviously but there you are.